


The Letter

by Meglifluous



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Heavy Angst, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 13:58:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4307736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meglifluous/pseuds/Meglifluous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miranda receives a fateful letter that helps to redefine her future with James.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Letter

Miranda opened the letter eagerly, ashamed of her own excitement. She knew it was foolish to believe that they could still be called back, to believe anything good could come from London, but Peter’s missives were her most direct link to Thomas, and she longed for news. Maybe Peter would describe a visit in greater detail this time, or include a quote that would bring her husband’s voice to mind. It was a shame that Lord Ashe was not a better writer. Miranda had to read between the lines to get any real sense of Thomas’ welfare and mood, but she was willing to put in the effort. James had no patience for it, flinging the letters across the room in fits of exasperation. “He doesn’t say _anything_ ,” he’d complain, and not without justification. “He might just as well have sent a household accounting sheet!”

It had become difficult not to read the letters with an eye toward James’ reaction, and perhaps that is how she managed to get all the way to the second paragraph before her hands began shaking so badly that Lord Ashe’s handwriting became unreadable. 

_We always knew he was too good for this world, and now it falls to me with a great sense of personal loss as well as my deepest sympathies to regretfully inform you of Lord Thomas Hamilton’s passing…_

Despite the sun beating down on her, Miranda’s vision went dark. She must have tipped the boy who had delivered the letter and gone into the house, sat on the first chair she’d come across and placed the letter carefully in her lap. And she must have sat like that for hours, because the room was rapidly darkening when she was startled by the door banging open. 

“The doctor signed on,” James announced triumphantly, abstaining from more traditional greetings in favor of continuing a conversation they had left unfinished days before. He slammed the door shut behind him and hung what Miranda had come to think of as “that ridiculous coat,”— the one he insisted made him look like a pirate captain—on the wall rack by the door before spinning toward her. “That’s seventy-six men, not including yours truly, and Hal is confident we can pick up at least thirty more in—“ He stopped, finally sensing her stillness, and looked around at the unlit candles and growing shadows surrounding her. “Miranda, what it is? What’s wrong?”

Miranda raised her eyes to him slowly, torn between needing to share the news with him and being genuinely afraid to do so. He had become a different person in exile; moody and obsessive and dangerous in a way she didn’t recognize. Even in jovial spirits, as he sometimes still was when discussing his “plan,” there was an undercurrent of violence and peril, an impatience to get on with the business of crossing over some line of criminality that would forever remove him from the clutch of civility. 

God knows she missed Thomas. She missed him desperately, and she was furious and miserable and aggrieved to have been sent away from him. But James was blown apart. He was scaring her. She honestly didn’t know if he would survive his own anguish, and she had promised Thomas to keep him safe, a promise that had just become the last one she would ever make to her husband. Had Thomas known, she wondered, when he had made her make it, how deeply the desolation ran in James? They had discussed him, of course, noting the working class chip on his shoulder, his incorrigible scrappiness, his temper—which, if she were being honest with herself, had been apparent even then—his passion. “Our Lieutenant has hidden depths,” Thomas had joked, and Miranda had laughed because there was no missing that. You would have to have been devotedly unobservant not to see that he was more than just a pretty face. His astonishing memory and intelligence had been immediately apparent, as had the wild insecurities lurking just beneath his bravado. There was so much tension in him, but never anything Thomas couldn’t melt. Miranda had never seen anyone more tranquil than James became when Thomas touched him or caught his gaze. As jealous as it sometimes made her, she could not help smiling and loving them both all the more when she saw it. Away from Thomas her life had lost all light; she felt sunblind to the future, morally and habitually adrift. But James was more than blinded, he was gutted. Without Thomas, he had lost all sense of peace. And now she was to tell him that it was gone forever, that he would never know that feeling again? 

She was trying to raise the letter in one hand to show him, but her hand had begun trembling again, and the look on her face must have been worse than she feared, for James crossed the room quickly to kneel before her chair and simply took the cursed thing out of her hand and placed it on the floor without a glance. He then rose just enough to wrap his arms around her back, pulling her forward into his warmth, and she began shuddering with sobs the second her cheek fell against his shoulder. She could feel him stiffen with alarm—she was not one to give in to tears—before pushing her carefully against the wooden chair back, hands on her shoulders, seeking her gaze. 

“What’s happened? Tell me.” 

Looking at him, unable to speak, she felt a strange spark of anger. Not because she didn’t love him, not because her heart wasn’t already bleeding for his loss as well as hers, but because she knew that just as his love for Thomas had eclipsed her own, so, too, would his grief. She tried to swallow the feeling and felt it spread through her belly and grow into something new she could not yet name. James noticed the envelope in her lap then and frowned as he took it from her.

“What’s this? A letter from Peter?” Oh, god, Miranda thought miserably. _This is going to kill him. I should have burned it. Why didn’t I burn it?_ She glanced toward the fireplace, which she hadn’t even bothered to sweep. It was ash-strewn and cold. James’ frown deepened as he failed to find anything within the envelope, and then he remembered the piece of paper he’d taken out of her hand and placed on the floor. She caught his wrist as he was bending down to retrieve it.

“Don’t—” she warned urgently, wiping a stray tear aggressively off her face with her free hand. “James, please. You can’t—“ But he was already reading it, standing above her chair completely motionless as she clung to the fabric of his sleeve, prepared to stop him, though from what she could not say. 

The letter dropped from his hand, fluttering down to the wooden floor like an injured bird. Miranda peered up at him and exhaled. His jaw had locked, snarling upper lip pulling back to reveal gritted teeth. His eyebrows were knotted, left eye twitching. A vein in his throat began to throb visibly as the color drained from his face, turning his beard a livid red. His fists were clenched, entire body tensed. He was a personification of rage, and Miranda let go of his arm, darkly satisfied. She would not stop him. She would not let her anger poison the space between them. There would be no more space between them, they were one thing, united in their pain and invincible in their inability to hurt any more than they already did. She realized that she had been trying to figure out what to do since the moment she first read the letter, but there was nothing she needed to do. James was already locked into a course of action that would, by necessity, spawn boundless violence. He would be the instrument of her fury; a murderous agent of inexact vengeance she could set on anything she chose. 

He screamed then, a roar of pure anguish that filled the house, maybe shook the whole island. Miranda closed her eyes and sat right in the center of it. Outside, the sun continued to sink beneath the horizon, the house growing ever darker.


End file.
